I received a "settlement offer" from AFI, Inc PO Box 3427 Bloomington, IL 61702-3427 for a Sprint long-distance account. I honestly can't recall when Sprint was my long distance carrier last, but I've not had a land-line for the past four years and I've not had a land-line under my name for even longer.
In any event, this letter came as quite a shock and caused me to wonder for quite some time how this could have happened; however, after spending a lot of time researching collection issues at bankrate dot com and reading the commentary here, I'm simply aggravated that I have to spend any amount of time and money resolving this fraudulent issue. Since I've already vested this much time looking into this, I thought I'd share my findings.
The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act cited by catlady above, is an approximately 10-page printed document issued by the FTC which details your rights as a consumer. I didn't want to trudge through all that, so I opted for the easy-to-read version at bankrate dot com entitled "Dealing with Old Debt," "How to handle a collection mistake," "Debt Collectors Calling?", "The do's and don'ts of dealing with collection agencies," "Statue of limitation on a judgment," "How to deal with debt collectors," "10 ways to fight back against a debt collector," "Debt, collection agencies and your rights," and most importantly, "Responding to a debt collector." You can locate all these article through a search of their website (search engines will not locate the articles). These are free articles available to the public at no charge or registration required.
The gist of the various articles is that selling unpaid debt to collection agencies (of questionable ethics it seems) is big business these days. The debt collectors probably don't have access to your social security number, UNLESS YOU GIVE IT TO THEM; just a name, amount owed, and address at that time. The collection agency will then attempt to find anyone with a name or address match, perhaps doing a search of any public database, like a search through Yahoo.com, Google.com, etc or an online telephone directory like Superpages.com or Yellowpages.com just by entering the full name of the person they are searching for or simply sending a collection notice to the current residence of the address match.
Do NOT provide the collection agency with any of your personal information (social security number and date of birth). Simply respond to their notice immediately using the form letter provided within the "Responding to a debt collector" article, and remember to send it certified mail, return-receipt requested. The collection agency is required by The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to either provide proof of the exact amount of the debt incurred by means of bill or accounting form and all payments made to the account, or stop all collection procedures against you. Additionally, they may not provide undocumented collections to the credit bureaus (if you contest it and they can not provide proof, they can't add it to your credit report; if they do, you should contact the FTC). Also, if they continue to contact you on a debt they can not provide proof on, you should file a complaint with the FTC.
One other thing to mention is that debts seven years or older (based on when that debt was first reported to the credit bureaus), can not be included in your credit report (bankruptcies may remain for ten years). Additionally, some states have a statue of limitations on how long negative credit may appear on your credit report (it could be as little as five years). If these collection notices occur after this point, the credit bureaus may not include these debts onto your credit report and you should contact them to have them removed immediately.
Now again, I restate, this is all information I have gleaned from perusing some of the commentary here and articles from bankrate dot com. I am not an attorney and I do not claim to be dispensing legal advice. Feel free to double-check this information with bankrate dot com, the BBB, attorney general's office, your attorney, consumer credit counseling, your local research/reference librarian, etc. |
497 days ago by Not Another Sucker [
496 days ago by Fisher [